Le Château du Comte by Hélène Lavelle

Translated from the French by Valéry Soers.

In 2020, New Urge Editions published Hélène Lavelle‘s controversial erotic novel, The Rites of Ecstasy. Today, we are pleased to announce its sequel, Le Château du Comte – translated from the French by Valéry Soers.

Synopsis: Summoned back to the Domain, Gabrielle surrenders to the demands of the Vicomtesse, the Comte, and Lady Isabella. Much more than a sequel to The Rites of Ecstasy, this novel takes us beyond the introspective feminine dreaminess of La Maison to a more bracing, hallucinatory, wild and strange terrain of its own – the culmination and climax of ‘the Great Work’ on Gabrielle’s heart, soul, mind and body.

Le Château du Comte is a story of dramatic and erotic power – an immersion in another world – exploring the farther shores of female desire, love, hate and friendship, through extremes of pleasure and pain to the heights of the Sublime.

Product details:

Title: Le Château du Comte
Author: Hélène Lavelle
Translated from the French by Valéry Soers

ISBN: 979-8985999648

ASIN: ‎ B0B6792HVH

Publisher: ‎ New Urge / Black Scat Books

Publication date: July 11, 2022)

Language: ‎ English

Format: Paperback ‏

Pages: ‎ 316

Item Weight: ‎ 1.25 pounds

Dimensions: ‎ 6.14 x 0.79 x 9.21 inches

Book details (publisher): Le Château du Comte

Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6792HVH

Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B6792HVH

Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0B6792HVH

Purchase link (Can): https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0B6792HVH

Purchase link (France): https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0B6792HVH

Le Château du Comte is a sequel to The Rites of Ecstasy, details of which can be found here: The Rites of Ecstasy.

R J Dent’s Photos on ViewBug

This photo, along with hundreds of others R J Dent has taken over the years, can be seen on his ViewBug portfolio, available here: https://www.viewbug.com/member/R-J-Dent

As a writer/translator, R J Dent has written, translated or contributed to 23 books. Details of those books can be found here: http://www.rjdent.com/ and here: https://rjdentnewsandevents.wordpress.com/

Kinky by Denise Duhamel

Kinky (1997) is a Barbie-themed poetry collection by Denise Duhamel, published by Orchises Press.

Denise Duhamel’s best-selling and most popular poetry collection to date is Kinky (1997), which marries satire, humour and feminism through the portrayal of an icon of popular culture, the Barbie doll.

Kinky features a series of themed poems that take the reader through an extended series of satirical postures (‘Beatnik Barbie’, ‘Bisexual Barbie’, ‘Buddhist Barbie’, Native American Barbie’, etc.)

The poems in Kinky satirize aspects of American culture and society, and challenge preconceived notions of gender, masculinity, femininity and identity.

Denise Duhamel

Copies of Denise Duhamel’s Kinky are available here: https://www.amazon.com/Kinky-Denise-Duhamel/dp/0914061615

The Songs of Maldoror

by Le Comte de Lautréamont

Translated into modern English by R J Dent

Illustrated by Karolina Urbaniak

Published by Infinity Land Press 

Title: The Songs of Maldoror

Author: Le Comte de Lautréamont

Translator: R J Dent

Illustrator: Karolina Urbaniak

Foreword: Audrey Szasz

Afterword: Jeremy Reed

Publisher: Infinity Land Press

ISBN: 978-1-8382803-7-6

Format: Hardback

Pages: 288

Language: English

Dimensions: 210mm (8¼“) x 148mm (5¾”)

Weight: 672 grams (1.48 lbs)

‘A new, definitive edition of Lautréamont’s influential masterpiece. Vividly translated by R J Dent.’

Le Comte de Lautréamont was the nom de plume of Isidore Ducasse (1846–70), a Uruguayan-born French writer and poet whose only surviving major work of fiction, The Songs of Maldoror (Les Chants de Maldoror), was discovered by the Surrealists, who hailed the work as a dark progenitor of their movement. It was in The Songs of Maldoror that André Breton discovered the phrase that would come to represent the Surrealist doctrine of objective chance: “as beautiful as the random encounter between an umbrella and a sewing-machine upon a dissecting-table.”

Artists inspired by Lautréamont include Man Ray, René Magritte, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí. In this edition, award-winning photographer and design artist, Karolina Urbaniak, has created 37 full colour illustrations that complement the dark and disturbing elements of The Songs of Maldoror in all its savage beauty.

Vividly translated by R J Dent – the first new translation for over forty years – The Songs of Maldoror also includes a foreword by avant garde writer, Audrey Szasz and an afterword by poet Jeremy Reed. 

The Songs of Maldoror is a poetic novel (or a long prose poem) consisting of six cantos. It was written between 1868 and 1869 by Le Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse. During the early 1900s, many of the surrealists (Salvador Dalí, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Max Ernst) cited the novel as a major inspiration to their own works. The Songs of Maldoror – and the book’s protagonist Maldoror – have continued to fascinate readers since its publication.

The Songs of Maldoror is available from Infinity Land Press here: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/the-songs-of-maldoror

or from R J Dent here: http://www.rjdent.com/the-songs-of-maldoror-2/

John Wisniewski’s interview with R J Dent (in which the Marquis de Sade, Alfred Jarry and The Songs of Maldoror are discussed) can be read here: 

https://www.greatweatherformedia.com/greatweatherformediacom/2022/9/27/an-interview-with-rj-dent

The Songs of Maldoror and other books by R J Dent can be found at: www.rjdent.com

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut

by Takashi Hiraide

Translated into English by Sawako Nakayasu

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut is a collection of poems by Takashi Hiraide.

Divided into 111 electrifying sections, Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut is a mix of detailed observations, poetics, narrative, autobiography, rhetorical experiments, hyper-realistic images, and playful linguistic subversions – all scored with the precision of a mathematical-musical structure.

Walnut: Latin: Juglans – the acorn of Jupiter; Japanese: kurumi – walnut or wrapping; sen’i: fighting spirit or fiber – in this series of interconnected poems, the meanings of walnut multiply: a city, a will, memory, time, uterus, language.

Takashi Hiraide’s polyhedral box with many drawers was described by poet Taijirou Amazawa as a ‘multiple-veined drama in which all the parts illuminate and reverberate against each other.’

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut was first published in Japan in 1982 to intense critical acclaim, and it has taken over twenty years to find its equally unique translator; poet Sawako Nakayasu, who transmutes the beauty of this triple-helical symphony of the walnut into English.

Book details:

Title: For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut

Author: Takashi Hiraide

Translator: Sawako Nakayasu

Language: English (bilingual)

ISBN: 978-0-8112-1748-4

Format: Paperback

Pages: 144

Dimensions: 16.76 x 1.02 x 16.51 cm

Publisher: New Directions

Publisher’s purchase link: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/for-the-fighting-spirit-of-the-walnut/

Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louÿs

Translated into modern English by R J Dent

Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louÿs, translated from the French into modern English by R J Dent, published by New Urge, is now available.

Synopsis: A young man moves into a new apartment and receives an advanced education in the permutations of sex from a mother and her three—surprisingly well-educated—daughters. Part memoir, part confession, Her Three Daughters is Pierre Louÿs at his erotic best.

“Louÿs’s jolly saga of sexual insatiability…is one of the handful of erotic works that achieve true literary status.” — Susan Sontag

“Among all Pierre Louÿs’s books, this is undoubtedly my favourite, the most moving, most uplifting and sometimes the most terrifying, the purest, the least artificial and the most modern. A masterpiece.” —André Pieyre de Mandiargues

“Amazing! It’s erotica, but high-quality erotica!” — Jean d’Ormesson

“One of the most moving books ever written on the fatality of desires.” —Annie Le Brun

“Here, without question, is Pierre Louÿs’ erotic masterpiece. The strength of the novel does not come from its eventual biographical value, but from the constant transgression that manifests itself within it—containing all the erotic themes dear to the writer, elevated to a singular power. We also find here the key qualities of Louÿs’ style: the liveliness of the dialogue, the precision of the language, the irony, the relentlessness with which certain obscene words are constantly repeated. This scandalous book constitutes a total profanation and derision of the bourgeois universe to which the author belonged.” —Jean-Paul Goujon

Book details:

Title: Her Three Daughters

Author: Pierre Louÿs

Translator: R J Dent

Language: English

Publisher: New Urge

Publication Date: February 13, 2023

ISBN: 979-8986922478

Format: Paperback

Pages: 340

Dimensions: 12.85 cm x 2.16 cm x 19.84 cm (5.06 inches x 0.85 inches x 7.81 inches)

Weight: 15.5 ounces (439.41 grams)

Book details (publisher): https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/02/26/all-in-the-family/

Book details (translator): http://www.rjdent.com/her-three-daughters/

Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BW2GGCQP

Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW2GGCQP

Purchase link (Can): https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BW2GGCQP

Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BW2GGCQP

Purchase link (Italy): https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0BW2GGCQP/

Purchase link (Holl): https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0BW2GGCQP/

Purchase link (Fr): https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0BW2GGCQP/

Purchase link (Ger): https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0BW2GGCQP/

Translator’s website: www.rjdent.com

Strange Fruit by Lilian Smith

Strange Fruit is a 1944 bestselling debut novel by American author Lillian Smith.

It deals with the then-forbidden and controversial theme of interracial romance. Its working title was Jordan is so Chilly, but Smith retitled it Strange Fruit prior to publication

Initially, the book was met with controversy over its depiction of interracial romance and sex.

It was banned from several locations including the United States Postal Office. Strange Fruit was also banned from being mailed through the U.S. Postal Service until President Franklin D. Roosevelt interceded at his wife Eleanor’s request.

After the book’s release, it was banned in Boston and Detroit for ‘lewdness’ and crude language. Of the book’s banning, Smith commented: ‘These people fear a book like Strange Fruit with a profound dread; and will seize on any pretext, however silly, to keep others and themselves, from having access to it.’

The book sold well and within a few months of its initial publication in February, topped the bestseller list of the New York Times Book Review.

A Georgia newspaper complained that the relationship in the book made ‘courtship between Negroes and whites appear attractive’ and Smith worried that the focus on the romance in the book would detract from its political message.

A reviewer for the Milwaukee Journal claimed the book ‘indicts the thing called ‘white supremacy’ and was a ‘grand opera’.

A 1944 review from The Rotarian praised the novel, calling it ‘absorbingly dramatic’ and citing its realism as a highlight. 

Smith refrained from portraying her protagonist, Nonnie, in any of the then typical racist stereotypes of black women as either mammies or Jezebels, making her closer to images of the ‘ideal’ white woman: beautiful, kind, compassionate, and loving. For Smith, Nonnie simply happened to be black. Nonnie was not written to be ashamed of her blackness, nor written to be an ‘honorary white woman’.

In her 1956 autobiography, singer Billie Holiday wrote that Smith named the book after the 1939 song ‘Strange Fruit’, written by Lewis Allen, which was about lynching and racism against African Americans.

Smith denied this, insisting that the book’s title referred to the ‘damaged, twisted people (both black and white) who are the products or results of our racist culture.’

The Rites of Ecstasy by Hélène Lavelle

Translated from the French by Valéry Soers

In the tradition of Decadent literature, spiced with Gothic, this provocative novel takes the reader on a voyage through dream, reverie, fantasy, memory and imagination – recounting the raptures and the initiation tortures of a young woman, Gabrielle, by the Vicomtesse, the Comte and their entourage in The Domain.

Sexually explicit without being crude, The Rites of Ecstasy is the story of a woman whose libido and personality lead her to increasingly submissive behaviour – allowing herself to be sexually used, violently beaten, and physically mutilated, which ultimately leads her to discover who – and what – she really is. As Gabrielle’s submission deepens and becomes more extreme, the novel simultaneously deepens its thematic explorations of the relationship between surrender and freedom, the nature and the demands of love, and the transcendent aspects of sexual desire.

A sublime novel that explores love, subservience, cruelty and dominance. The Rites of Ecstasy is a deeply erotic literary work, and as such, Hélène Lavelle’s novel is seductive and dangerous.

This is a novel for connoisseurs of erotic literature, an adult book in every sense, an interesting and intelligent novel of ideas, expressed with eloquence, elegance and wit; beautifully written by Hélène Lavelle, and lucidly translated into sophisticated English by Valéry Soers.

“This modern classic deserves to be ranked alongside the great French erotic masterpieces, Story of O and The Image , and very few others. Not for the faint-hearted or the narrow-minded, this story of love, excess, degradation, cruelty, tenderness and beauty is for all women whose fantasies and desires embrace the intensely erotic.” — Dawn Avril Fitzroy

Title: The Rites of Ecstasy

Author: Hélène Lavelle

Translator: Valéry Soers

Publisher: New Urge Editions

ISBN-10: 1735615900

ISBN-13: 978-1735615905

Format: Paperback

Pages: 238

Language: English

Weight: 15.5 ounces (439.41 grams)

Dimensions: 6.14 x 0.6 x 9.21 inches (15.6 x 1.52 x 23.39 cm)

Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735615900

Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1735615900

Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1735615900

Hélène Lavelle has also written Le Château du Comte, which is a sequel to The Rites of Ecstasy. Details of Le Château du Comte are available here: Le Château du Comte

In My Library – the Marquis de Sade

The Marquis de Sade books in my library – descending:

Retaliation: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737371170

The Self-Made Cuckold: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737371197

Justine

Justine

The Misfortunes of Virtue

The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom

Juliette

The Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sade

The Crimes of Love

The Marquise de Gange

The Marquis de Sade: A Life (Schaeffer)

Justine

Crimes of Passion

Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom & Other Writings

Sade My Neighbour (Klossowski)

Sade: The Libertine Novels (Phillips)

The Mystified Magistrate

Some Thoughts on the Novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1471796957

De Sade: Sex and Death: http://www.rjdent.com/sade-sex-and-death-the-divine-marquis-and-the-surrealists/

Aline and Valcour (Vols. 1, 2 & 3)

Historiettes, Contes et Fabliaux (Stories, Tales and Fables)

Letters From Prison

Jean-Fucque by Louis Aragon

Adapted from the French by R J Dent

Inspired by Louis Aragon’s obscure surrealist text, R J Dent’s 21st century adaptation of Aragon’s absurdist tale recounts the adventures of Jean-Fucque (Le Cocque), a large, disembodied penis who had a series of exploits and encounters around Paris.

This English rendition recounts Jean-Fucque’s adventures on the Metro, including his satisfactory encounters with several female passengers, as well as details of his small room in a hotel frequented by prostitutes, and an explanation as to why Jean-Fucque buys a hat.

Jean-Fucque is No. 22 in the Pocket Erotica series.

Product details:

Publisher: ‎New Urge Editions / Pocket Erotica

Publication Date: November 24, 2021
Language: ‎English
Format: Paperback

Pages: 131
ISBN-10: ‎1737943042
ISBN-13: ‎978-1737943044
Item Weight: ‎5 ounces (141.74 grams)
Dimensions: ‎4 x 0.33 x 6 inches (10.16 x 0.84 x 15.24 cm)

The Publisher’s description of the book (with links) is here: https://blackscatbooks.com/2021/11/25/watch-out-here-comes-jean-fucque/

Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737943042

Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1737943042

Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1737943042

Details of R J Dent’s books, events, news, forthcoming, etc, at http://www.rjdent.com/